National Party MP Claudette Hauiti has given up her parliamentary charge card after she used it to pay for a personal trip to Australia.

“I went to Australia. It was travel only and way outside Parliamentary Service guidelines,” she told Fairfax Media.

She said the trip over Christmas last year and other questionable spending, including refreshments for a hui on a marae, had cost about $200, which she has since repaid.

“Of course it’s absolutely no excuse for not knowing the Speaker’s rulings. It is my responsibility and I didn’t do it.” …

Earlier this year Ms Hauiti was caught out breaking Parliament’s rules by employing her civil union spouse in her electorate office.

The rules are not obscure. Parliamentary Service provide a facility where you can check expenditure and appointments. One can forgive one transgression as a beginner’s mistake, but a second one can’t be treated so benignly.

Also just common sense should tell you that you don’t charge a trip to Australia to Parliament. You actually need the permission of the Whips to travel overseas on official business.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2014 at 11:00 am and is filed under NZ Politics.
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I feel her list place will be adversely affected by this. She is just not that ready for the trust that is required of an MP. She has been honest in fronting up but not good enough. There are plenty of others who could take her slot.

The reality of a multicultural society is that people prefer to have someone who looks like them representing them, reading the news to them, portraying characters on tv shows etc. I don’t think Europeans really get that, otherwise they wouldn’t be displacing themselves.

You just cannot get rid of her. If you do, you will be accused of Maori or lesbian bashing. Dealing with Aaron Gilmore was easy. No one is going to argue if you cut ties with an arrogant white heterosexual male. Although Gilmore might still be there if he immediately manned up, apologised and admitted that he was stupid and wrong. I guess that is the big difference between these two.

And this is the replacement for Aaron Gilmore, who the MSM and then National hounded out of Parliament for what was the initially relatively minor transgression of behaving like a big-headed lout when he was pissed at a private dinner. The media reported that Gilmore was leaving the House “in disgrace”.

John Key joined the MSM lynch mob, as this report from the time shows:

Following Gilmore’s assertion today he wouldn’t resign, Key said the “vast majority” of Kiwis did not care about the embattled MP.

“I’ve genuinely tried to get some answers, I’ve genuinely tried to support him and I made it quite clear that if I couldn’t reconcile that, I saw that as serious.”

Key said this was why he escalated the situation to the party president yesterday.

Earlier today he had stepped up pressure on Gilmore noting each time he speaks with him the story “either changes or is different”.

Another MSM report from the time:

The National Party has recruited a lesbian, Maori, former-Grassroots Labour supporter who is expected to take a top list spot and seat in Parliament.

Claudette Hauiti, who is in a civil union and raising a child with her partner, admits she “ticks all the boxes” on National’s representation scale.

Ms Hauiti says “I’m not made up of one particular thing, I’m made up of many things….my iwitanga…I’m also an urban Maori, I’m also a business woman…I’m also a mother and all those things help build a very strong character for the National Party”.

“I’ve had an excellent run to become the candidate for Mangere. I’ve had exceptional support,” she says.

National is struggling to shake its reputation as a boys’ club with only 16 of its 57 MPs being female.

Surely you don’t have to be very bright to know that a Parliamentary card (or whatever it is) would only be used for business relating to her Government position. Personal travel is just that – personal and would be paid for out of your own purse. It was just another rort by these people who just can’t keep their hands out of other people’s pockets when the opportunity is out there right in front of you – for the taking in their little minds. It’s how their minds work. It is rather like an epidemic when you think of all the Trusts and other institutions that have been fleeced by ‘these people’.

Of course she was honest in fronting up, because she was caught wasn’t she.!! One wonders if she would ever have fronted if she hadn’t been pinged. I don’t give her any kudos for fronting up. She shouldn’t have done it in the first place. Get rid of her – she’s untrustworthy.

Hauiti’s excuses frankly are total bullshit…and it shows from the way her answers are all over the place…”Of course the trip was private…”… “ah well actually maybe it wasn’t because I met Maori in Australia who are on the electoral roll”…

She also tries to shift at least some of the blame onto her EA’s (Parliaments version of PA’s…for some reason she seems to have two of them) which is outrageous…If the EA was asked if this trip was kosher and she or he didn’t know, they would have immediately called Parliamentary Services and asked…On the very rare occasions my EA didn’t know something, she would immediately start calling people until she could give me the definitive answer…usually within minutes.

This sort of expense fiddling is normally the sort of thing lefties do…remember Phillida Bunkle and her two places of residence for different purposes…and He Who is Protected and the book of taxi chits…Tuku and his underpants…

As others have said, perhaps this is what you get when selections are made to fill some unofficial quota rather than on merit…

..And well done for posting this DPF…it must very very puzzling for Standard readers…Can you imagine a similar post appearing there if it was a Labour MP??? Not a snowball’s chance…

David: What flipper said…it has always grated on me that the MSM – led by the leftie prick Espiner – merrily ignored the suppression order in my case, but they have all kept shtum on one of their own for years…

The latest I heard was Mr X (I just don’t need more shit with the Law Society) was applying to the Court to have it varied, so he could include this matter in his autobiography… That was months ago..Obtaining such a variation took about 3 days in my own case…perhaps Mr X isn’t so keen on outing himself after all..

Alan: Quite so…lying will kill you in any of the parties of the right…not so sure about the Socialists…different rules I suspect…The question the leader asks is likely to be “Can we get away with this?” Rather than “Is it true?”

Why has all this stale news surfaced now – to try and attack National, or to run her out of Parliament – how dare a woman in such a situation be a National candidate instead of a left wing candidate.

Goodness knows what the dynamics behind this are – whether she was allowed to stay on overall merit or a fear of upsetting things. Perhaps the easiest approach was to tolerate her presence and just give her a hopeless list position.

Given that Parliament is in recess over Christmas, how could she possibly mistake any trip for Parliamentary business? I think the “ah well actually maybe it [was not private] because I met Maori in Australia” is the troublesome part.

Why are some of us not surprised that yet another of the Ethnic Minority has been caught out with theft as a servant because that’s what it is no ifs no buts no maybes. If she was my employee she’d been sacked as the terms of employment make theft as a servant a sacking offence.

But as the law and the rules for the rest of us don’t apply to pollies and other civil servants they can get away with whatever and we cant do anything about it.

Except call them what they are and that is Two Faced Hypocritical Arseholes.

Gilmore lost his job not for being an arsehole but for the far more serious crime of lying to John Key about it.

Only when his “mate” dobbed him was he finished.

Here’s an extract from an NBR report in May of last year:

At a press conference at Parliament this morning, a tearful Aaron Gilmore admitted he was a “bully” and a “dickhead” but denies the central accusation of a fellow diner.

At a Hamner Springs restaurant during a National Party regional conference, the Christchurch-based list MP was said to have threatened to have the Prime Minister’s office sack a barman if he was not served another drink.

He denied the allegation when questioned by John Key’s chief-of-staff – leading to accusations he was also a liar.

If this was Gilmore’s lie – over an incident when he was pissed at a private function – it was fairly minor compared with fucking around with taxpayer funds. In my view it was of lesser moral transgression than those of some relatively recent politicians of both Labour and National and who remained MPs.

Finally, Alan, in your post, on what do you base your view that the person who “dobbed him in” was a “mate” of Gilmore?

Gilmore doesn’t impress as political material, but the MSM’s lynching of him was wrong.

Jack: It is common knowledge that someone dining in Gilmore’s party put the boot in…IIRC that happened when Gilmore tried to suggest that everyone in his party were a bit cut and got rowdy, and denied making the threat…in fact I think his first response was to suggest someone else in the party had done so..

All of that said, I agree it was far from a hanging offence…the media literally chased the poor bastard like a pack of hounds after a fox…I opined at the time, and I stand by what I said, that sooner or later they will drive some poor sod to suicide…and then film the funeral..

Huevon: Every MP gets the same entitlements…whether they be long serving Select Committee Chairs or first term backbenchers…this charge card has been introduced since I was there…Other than accommodation – which was billed direct to Parliamentary Services – we had to pay our own miscellaneous expenses and then claim them back every month…These cards are obviously so that isn’t necessary – but they rely on the honesty of the polis..

How the woman was ever considered suitably qualified to be on the National Party list escapes me . . .

On second thoughts it doesn’t. Hauiti is a classic example of the victory of optics over substance. Being a female, mouldi and a lesbian was too much of an opportunity for the members of National’s “progressive” organizing committees to resist . . she was a great opportunity to demonstrate what an “inclusive”, “diverse”, “broad church” the contemporary National party is.

It is rather rapidly becoming apparent that this woman is a genuine bad egg and a boil on the backside of the National Party.
Why don’t they get rid of her? I’m sure she will quickly find Employment with the Mana Party..(with whom she seems far better suited)

cricko: Now you are just being mischievous, and you know it… things like tribal affiliations are things you can only understand if you are a murri…you shouldn’t have the temerity to even ask the question!

One interesting thing…when Ms Hauiti made her first “mistake” her sister came in here under her own name and made a spirited defence of her…I for one respected her for doing it…but Sis is conspicuously absent this time…and IIRC everyone treated her with respect, there was no abuse…No such defence this time…

July 17th, 2014 at 3:57 pm
cricko: Now you are just being mischievous, and you know it… things like tribal affiliations are things you can only understand if you are a murri…

Sessh you guys are pieces of work. Turn a reasonable post into a cannibalistic slur. How about not defining someone by their gender, race, or sexual prefernce, regardless of what they did. I mean are you telling me that white, hetro, males would never abuse their card? Childish knobs.

Parliamentarians implicit claim even if they never say it, is they’re just way better than Joe and Jane Sixpack simply by virtue of standing. And frankly, they need to stand by that implicit claim, the parliamentarians need to enforce it as a non-partisan group and a transgressor with mens rea needs to resign straight away or be forced to. Regrettably the actual record is that a few notables including the author of that quote, have resigned straight away. Thus demonstrating they have integrity and understanding. The rest, the majority, haven’t, and the parliamentarians as a group have simply reshuffled their seats to accommodate the transgressor in their new position. And the media have done what the brave and astute Fourth Estate line of last defence has always done: moved onto the next breathlessly exciting story as if nothing ever happened.

I reckon what should happen is when one of the parliamentarians does something like this, every single parliamentarian’s pay should be docked until every cent is repaid. Apparently, that’s the only thing that’s going to get their attention.

WTF?
‘Businesswoman’ my arse. Looks like she is just a former TV producer making low rating yet ‘worthy’ television for minorities courtesy of the tax payer, suckin on that good old teat. If National have to put people like this on their list then they have really lost their way.

its an idiot: where did anyone refer to Maori cannabilism? I mean we all know they were enthusiastic practitioners of it, but where is the reference to “that horrible practice” (to borrow from Prof. Paul Moon) on this thread??